Painting of the Day, January 16, 2012

By Donna Poulton

Kathryn Stats, Spider Rock (Canyon De Chelly), c. 2008, oil, 40 x 30 in. Credit: permission of Kathryn Stats and the Greenhouse Gallery Searching for the next landscape composition is, for Kathryn D. Stats, like hunting for treasure; she explains that “when a top crust of rock breaks off and falls down the slopes of softer eroded layers, it reminds me of crude jewels fallen from the crown to decorate the shoulders of softer layers below.”  Like her famous great uncle, artist LeConte Stewart, she rarely used the color green, preferring instead hues of grey, peach, violet and terra cotta, colors of the desert southwest. Her vigorous brushwork and strong chromatic contrasts amplify the dizzying height of the great canyon.

In Canyon De Chelly, she found eroded layers in 800 ft. Spider Rock. According to Navajo legend, Spider Woman sprang from the rock to give humans the knowledge to defend themselves. Legend also maintains the end of the world will happen at Spider Rock.

Painting of the Day, November 14, 2011

By Donna Poulton

Credit: Bonhams & Butterfields, San Francisco

Edgar Alwin Payne (1883 -1947), Blue Canyon, c. 1930s, oil on canvas, 28 x 34 in.

Edgar Alwin Payne trained briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago before eventually settling in California. During the 1930s he was commissioned to create mural work and befriended Conrad Buff and Buck Weaver, both of whom helped him with the large scale work. Famous for his landscapes and mountain scenes set in the High Sierras of California, Payne was also attracted to the desert southwest and worked around Canyon de Chelly and the Grand Canyon for the Santa Fe Railroad. Payne wrote the primer Composition of Outdoor Painting in 1941. Now in its seventh edition, it is still considered today to be one of the most important and cherished books found on an artist's shelf.